Hunch offers a new way to search intelligently
June 15, 2009
The new Hunch (www.hunch.com) search portal that was launched on June 15th offers a very different way of finding answers to your questions online.
When you first enter the Hunch site you are asked a series of seemingly unrelated questions that some people may find a bit... strange. This is how the system that runs Hunch learns a little bit about who you are. We'll get to why this is important a little later. After you answer a short list of questions, you are taken to the real 'home page' of the site. From here, you have a lot of options but since it is primarily a search engine (a decision engine, really), we will focus on the search function. So go ahead and enter in a query in the search box.
Once you post a question in the search box, Hunch leverages the knowledge of all of its users in order to provide you with an answer to your question. It does this through a fairly simple process:
First, it asks you a set of questions about your search query. The algorithm behind Hunch takes your answers to these questions and compares them with the answers of other people online in order to determine what other people who are similar to you felt was a good answer. The more you use the system, the more it knows about how you think (remember how it asked you a few questions about yourself?) and thus the better it is at being able to provide you with a valid answer.
If you don't like the answers that it gives you, you can provide feedback that the system will remember and use the next time that you perform a search, even on a different topic. You can also refine the questions that the system asks and can even enter in new answers for existing questions if you feel that the answers that are already there are incomplete or just not good enough.
The whole process is similar to playing the popular 20 questions game online, but with a real world application.
OK, first impressions:
The site is laid out well, is clean, and offers a refreshing and novel way of searching online.
With wide support, the site will likely develop some very intricate question trees. I feel that if you are seeking to make a decision about an item or action, then this site can help you make that decision.
It is important to note that Hunch is not a true search engine in that it is not going to give you lists of websites after you type in a single keyword. Instead, it is expecting to be asked a decision-based question. "Should I do this or that?" "What is the best way to do XYZ?"
We performed the following search to test the system out:
My wife is currently in the market for a new cell phone, so she searched for "What cell phone should I buy"? The list of questions included everything from "What country do you live in?" to "What kind of text entry system do you want?" In the end, she was presented with 3 very good options for a phone and, best of all, all three had the exact features that she wanted.
Overall, I think that we will continue to use, and support, this system and will definitely keep it on our radar.
